The Solar System research group at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) is participating in the international programme to keep a closet track of asteroid 2024 YR4. The aim is to determine its orbit with the highest possible precision before it stops being observable by ground based and satellite telescopes in April, and so improving our value of the probability that it will impact the Earth in 2032. In this context several telescopes of the Canary Observatories of the IAC are playing an outstanding role in this observing campaign: The Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) at the Roque de

From today until 5 December 2025, the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) is hosting the SO/PHI Science and Team Meetings, an international gathering focused on the scientific and technical advances of the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) instrument aboard ESA's Solar Orbiter (SO) space mission. The development of PHI was co-led by the Spanish Space Solar Physics Consortium (S3PC), which also currently coordinates its scientific operation and exploitation. The IAC is part of this network. PHI is a high-precision solar observation instrument equipped with two telescopes—one

The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has received a visit from Robert P. Kirshner, Executive Director of the Thirty Meter Telescope International Observatory (TIO) . During his stay at the IAC headquarters in La Laguna, he was welcomed by the center’s director, Valentín Martínez Pillet, and by the deputy director, Eva Villaver Sobrino, along with other members of the research institute. During his visit, he was able to learn firsthand about the institution’s scientific and technological capabilities and gave a colloquium titled The Thirty Meter Telescope and Science of the Future